Conservatives use the lie of ever-increasing crime as a bogeyman to scare suburbanites into voting for their “tough-on-crime” (read ‘anti-poor + anti-minority’) policies. That homicide rates went up during the pandemic has been falsely used to demonize Biden, immigrants, and anyone else that Fox News dislikes.
We need people to actually have and care about data like this so they can resist misinformation and propaganda.